Warren Hellman is feeling the pressure.
As the new chairman of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund, Hellman has seen the ongoing economic meltdown depress the endowment’s assets while increasing demand for services provided by agencies it funds.
But the San Francisco philanthropist and former Lehman Brothers president is trying to push back.
“We need to help people understand that though they’re not feeling as affluent, their responsibilities are at least as great to the community we serve,” he says of the endowment’s donors and supporting foundations. “This is the time they have to dig a little deeper.”
The JCEF, which is part of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation and which serves as a kind of emergency fund for the local Jewish community, thrived under the stewardship of former executive director Phyllis Cook. She stepped down this year after 25 years on the job, having overseen significant JCEF growth.
With its many donor-advised funds, restricted and unrestricted funds and supporting foundations, the JCEF reached slightly more than $2.8 billion in combined assets by 2007.
That was then.
After Cook stepped down in June, Lisa Gurwitch assumed the post. Though highly regarded by JCEF stewards like Hellman, not even she could prevent the stock market tsunami from crashing into the endowment.
Total endowment assets today total around $2.6 billion, still impressive but down around $200 million from last year’s high.
Hellman admits the endowment’s value is likely to stay down, along with the stock market, for several quarters to come. That has led to some “hand-holding” of donors, as he puts it. But having toiled in the investment business since earning an MBA from Harvard in 1959, Hellman has seen it all. For now, he is keeping his cool.
“I’m convinced this is the same as every other market shakeout that I have lived through,” he says. “Maybe a little worse. Nobody predicted the Arab oil embargo. In 1973, people said this is the end of the world as we know it, the Arab countries will have all the money in the world. But a friend said to me, ‘Where are they going to spend their money?’ So the people that generated the collapse then generated the recovery.”
Hellman, 74, can serve up many such history lessons. He grew up in San Francisco, later graduating from U.C. Berkeley and the Harvard Business School. At Lehman Brothers, he served as president and chairman for, as he says it, “18 miserable years” (though he quickly adds, “There were unbelievable great people there”).
Currently chairman and co-founder of the private equity investment firm Hellman and Friedman, he has overseen management of $5 billion in capital and invested in more than 45 companies. In the Jewish community, he served as chairman of Berkeley’s Judah L. Magnes Museum earlier this decade.
But many locals know him best as the founder of San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, the free music celebration held in Golden Gate Park. Cowboy hat firmly in place, Hellman always takes the stage at some point during the popular annual event.
With his record of success, it’s hard to picture Hellman intimidated, but he says with a slight chuckle that he is “afraid” of the JCEF’s investment committee.
“You put a bunch of investment geniuses in a room and invariably it underperforms,” he says. “Even the board is reasonably fractious. You have a lot of very successful people with strong opinions. But what I like so far is people are really concerned. They want to fund solutions.”
Hellman puts high on his agenda improving the JCEF’s computer and information technology system. “I think the abacus went out of style a long time ago,” he jokes. “They need to get modernized in terms of software for donors, and that will cost some money.”
Spend some to make some, as the old adage goes. It’s all part of keeping the JCEF strong and ready to aid the Jewish community at a moment’s notice.
Says Hellman, “So far I’m pretty optimistic.”